Hunter's Run(34)

They found a decent spot by the middle morning, and Ramón gently paddled them to a landing. The impact of the bank caused the other man to stumble slightly, but the raft held together just fine. Ramón checked all the cane floats, to be sure, but none of his knots had come loose.

The other man cut cane for the rest of the morning while Ramón rounded up food. It would have been easier with a pistol, but there were a few sug beetles to be found and he managed to trap three fat, mud-colored things that looked like a cross between crayfish and eels. He didn't know what they were, but the rule of thumb was that the poisonous animals were brighter colored, so the eel-things were more likely to be edible than not. Still, he might let the other man try them first.

When he found his twin, the man was squatting on the ground, his head hung low. The field knife was in his hand and pinked by the cane juice; it looked less like blood than some sort of cherry sauce. The pile of cane on the shore was smaller than Ramón had expected. Ramón cleared his throat hard enough to be heard over the water, and the man's head rose. The black eyes squinted at Ramón for a moment before his twin lifted his chin in greeting.

"Hey," Ramón said. "I got some things. They're probably good to eat. You seen these before?"

His twin shifted his focus to the eel-things.

"No," the man said. "But they're dead. So let's cook them, eh?"

"Right," Ramón said. "You okay, man? You look tired."

"Didn't sleep," his twin spat. "And before that, I was running for my fucking life with nothing but what I had on for a few days. And before that, I had my hand fucking blown up."

"Maybe we should take a day," Ramón said, dropping the dead creatures and holding his hand out for the field knife. "Rest up, you know. Get our strength back."

"Fuck that," the twin said. He shifted his gaze to Ramón's outstretched hand.

"I can't gut these things with my fucking fingernails," Ramón said. His twin shrugged, tossed the knife in the air, catching it by the blade, and held it out grip-first for Ramón to take. He was fucked up, no question, but Ramón's twin still had reflexes.

The eel-things had a simple enough gut. Ramón cleaned out everything that didn't look like muscle, on the theory that any weird digestive enzymes or venom sacs weren't likely to be in that tissue. He roasted them on a spit, and, while cooking, they smelled like roast beef and hot mud. The sug beetles, he boiled in the tin drinking cup from the field kit. The other man sat at the riverside, looking out over the bright water, his gaze empty. Ramón decided he'd try the eel-things first after all. He carved off a sliver, placed it on his tongue, gagged, and threw the eel-things still on their spit out into the river.

"Sug beetles," he said. "We're having sug beetles."

The other man looked up at him, shading his eyes with his wrapped hand.

"They're here," his twin said.

"Who?" Ramón asked, but the man didn't answer. When Ramón followed his gaze, it was clear enough. Like hawks riding the thermals in the high air. The great black galley ships.

The Silver Enye had returned to S?o Paulo.

                       
       
           



       Chapter 18

After they ate, the man curled in a ball and fell into a profound sleep. There were still a couple hours of daylight left, so Ramón took the knife and harvested cane. The stalks were green as grass before he cut them, and turned red within a minute or two of being severed. It wasn't hard work, and by the time the sunset filled the western sky-distant clouds glowing gold and orange and gaudy pink-he'd almost doubled the pile that his twin had made. He washed his hands and the blade in the river, then rooted through the field pack until he found the rough, gray sharpening stone. His twin hadn't been doing much of a job keeping the knife sharp. But, then, the poor fucker only had one working hand. It was a pretty good excuse.

He sat at the water's edge, listening to the sharp, dangerous hiss of steel against stone, and looking up. Even after the trees and the river had fallen into a deep gray twilight, the Enye ships in their high orbit glowed with the light of the sun. Brighter than stars. He watched as they fell into S?o Paulo's shadow, dimming like someone had flipped a switch until they were only visible by the violet and orange running lights-less obvious, but present just the same. It was like God had come and hung a skull in the sky to stare down and remind Ramón of the slaughter that he'd seen in Maneck's mind. And the slaughter that was likely to come once he and his twin returned to the city.

As the prisoner of Maneck and the aliens, he had spent relatively little time concerning himself with his return from the wild. It had, he supposed, been so unlikely a prospect that more immediate problems had kept his attention. But now that he was free and traveling toward home with his twin, the question loomed large. He brushed his hand over his arm, where there was now a thin white line, jagged and half-formed. The machete scar slowly welling up. What had Maneck said? That he'd "continue to approximate the source form." He touched the thin line of knotting flesh with his fingertips. His beard was also thickening, his hands becoming rougher. He was becoming more and more like the other man. He closed his eyes, torn between relief at seeing his own flesh coming back again and anxiety about what would come-no one would mistake them for different men. No one would even think they were twins-they were too close for that. By the time they reached another human being, they would have the same scars, the same calluses, the same faces and bodies and hair.

He couldn't very well march in and announce himself to be Ramón Espejo, with the other man at his side. Even if there was no way to tell them apart-and who could say what traces Maneck's technology would leave?-the governor would hardly ignore it. And Ramón knew himself well enough to know what his twin would think of him.

It would be better to go quickly, and arrive at Fiddler's Jump while they still looked similar but not yet identical. Ramón could engineer some excuse to slip away. Then south, maybe even to Amadora. He'd need to find someone who could give him fake papers. Not that he had the money to pay for forged documents, but again, there couldn't be two Ramón Espejos …  .

He let the knife falter, the whetting stone heavy in his hand. No. He needed money to start again. He knew all of his banking codes, could pass any authentication tests the banks required. The thing was to go back to Diegotown while his twin was still recuperating, clean out the accounts, maybe borrow some on credit, and then make his way south. It would leave the other man saddled with debts, but at least people would know him. He could start over. They both could. And it wasn't even stealing, really. He was Ramón Espejo, and that was his own money he was taking.

And if the police were looking for the man who'd killed the European, well, then perhaps his twin wouldn't mind the missing cash so much after all. Ramón chuckled. It wasn't as if they could hang him twice for the same crime. He imagined himself setting up in Amadora, maybe a simple beach house on the south coast. Once he had papers, he could rent a new van. At least until he found enough work to buy his own. He imagined waking to the sound of the surf, the cool light of morning. He imagined waking alone, on a cot too small for two bodies to share. Elena, after all, would have the other man. And he would have her. Ramón could start again. Like a snake shedding its skin, he could leave his old, gray life behind. Maybe he'd stop drinking so much. Stop going to bars and picking fights. Killing men or having them try to kill him. He could be someone new. How many men had dreamed of that, and how few had the chance?

It all depended on getting south quickly, before the recapitulation had thickened his scars and coarsened his hair. Before the wrinkles in his face matched the other man's, before the moles they shared became dark enough to be obvious on casual inspection. Ramón didn't know how long that would be, but he couldn't imagine it would take long. Not so many days ago, he'd just been a severed finger, and now he was nearly back to normal.

Far above, one of the Enye ships blinked out of existence and then back as the jump drives cooled. Ramón's gut tightened, remembering how it felt to be aboard those ships when they stuttered like that. The first time had been with old Palenki and his work gang. The ship had launched from its orbit, rising like a transport van and never leveling out. Ramón remembered the press of acceleration when the rockets fired. It had been like letting the water out of the tub after a hot bath, or like the torpor after sex. The muscles themselves had felt heavy on his bones. He'd smiled and looked over at Fat Enrique-he hadn't thought about Fat Enrique for years-and grinned. The boy had grinned back. They were leaving everything behind, and by the time their journey ended, everyone they'd known or spoken to or been bullied by or fucked or fucked over or been fucked over by would have died from old age. There were stories about the conquistadors burning their boats when they'd reached the new world. Ramón and Palenki and Fat Enrique and all the rest were doing the same. Earth was dead for them. Only the future mattered.